The Massachusetts Ballot Questions, Explained

Every campaign that wants to put a statewide question before voters needs to follow a process with multiple steps.

The cycle runs every two years. Questions must be filed with state officials by the first Wednesday in August of an odd year, roughly 15 months before the next statewide election. The attorney general then reviews each proposal to determine whether it fulfills eligibility requirements laid out in the state constitution.

The first major test is whether backers can collect tens of thousands of signatures (equal to 3 percent of the votes cast in the last gubernatorial election) from registered voters by mid-November. This cycle, that target was 74,574 signatures.

If campaigns are successful there, questions head to the Legislature for several months of deliberation, which in recent cycles has featured lawmakers holding public hearings on the questions. The Legislature can approve each question as written, take no action, or try to negotiate with proponents on a compromise before the ballot is finalized in July.

Opponents often use every option available to try and spike a measure before it gets to the ballot, so some questions wind up facing lawsuits before the Supreme Judicial Court to determine whether they are eligible to go before voters. If the Legislature takes no action on a question, its backers have to complete one more, smaller round of signature-gathering — this time collecting enough signatures to equal 0.5 percent of the votes cast in the last gubernatorial contest, or 12,429 — by mid-June.

The secretary of state’s office then certifies signatures and decides in what order the questions should appear before voters, locking in each measure’s spot.

After the first signature-gathering hurdle, which typically whittles down the field considerably, questions still in the mix head to Beacon Hill for deliberation by the Legislature.

Officially, lawmakers can only approve any question as it is drafted or take no action, allowing it to advance. Less formally, though, legislators can use the process as an opportunity to negotiate with campaigns. It’s rare, but those talks occasionally lead to compromise: The Legislature approves a bill tackling the same topic as the ballot question, and question backers agree to drop their campaign.

It’s a scenario that Massachusetts might have seen with a rent control ballot question, which prompted initial negotiations over a deal. That was before the Supreme Judicial Court booted it from the ballot, ruling that the question improperly mentioned religion. That violated the limits on the topics that ballot questions are permitted to touch on.

Questions 1 through 8 all followed the same process described above to make the ballot, but Question 9 did not. That measure is instead a referendum seeking to repeal a sweeping gun control law enacted in July 2024 that included a prohibition on carrying firearms in some public places and expanded the “red flag” statute that allows courts to remove weapons from people deemed a threat.

In Massachusetts, in addition to suggesting a new law or constitutional amendment, constituents can launch a ballot question campaign seeking to undo a law within 30 days of its enactment. The process is roughly similar to campaigns for other ballot questions: A small group submits the initial petition, then organizers need to collect tens of thousands of signatures from registered voters to place the proposed repeal on the ballot. For a repeal question, the campaign needs to hit a higher threshold. Question backers must gather enough signatures to equal at least 1.5 percent of the votes cast for governor in the last election to place the repeal on the ballot. No more than 25 percent of the total signature haul can come from residents of a single county.

Gun owner groups and Second Amendment supporters filed petitions and began collecting signatures soon after the law was signed two years ago. However, the process took too long to meet the deadline for the November 2024 ballot.

An even dozen questions had cleared most of the qualification hurdles. But three wound up invalidated by the state’s highest court.

The Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) issued a non-binding opinion that one measure seeking to overhaul legislative stipends appeared unconstitutional because it sought to change internal legislative rules, which can only be decided by lawmakers themselves. That prompted the attorney general’s office to yank its certification.

Additionally, the SJC directly ruled two other questions ineligible for the ballot. Justices found that a proposal to revive rent control should not qualify because the text of the question exempted the rent cap from religious institutions, running afoul of a requirement that ballot measures stay away from religion as a topic. The court also said a proposed income tax cut cannot go before voters because the attorney general’s office made a significant mistake when drafting the official summary of the proposal, which created too much confusion for voters.

In theory, yes, although in practice the outcome of a ballot measure can vary. A law enacted by the ballot has the same standing as a law enacted by the Legislature. That also means that lawmakers can change it or even repeal it after voters decide. That might carry political consequences, but there’s no legal barrier to doing so.

Approved ballot laws are also not immune to being modified or repealed entirely by a subsequent ballot question campaign. In the case of recreational marijuana, voters approved the decriminalization of cannabis in 2016, and a decade later are being asked in a ballot question this year whether to undo that decision. Laws enacted by ballot questions can also find themselves in implementation limbo. A 2024 ballot question giving the state auditor the power to audit the Legislature still has not forced much substantial change because lawmakers have spent nearly two years arguing that it violates the constitutional separation of powers without directly asking a court to issue a final decision.